Tuesday, March 03, 2015

Mapping Police Violence and Killings

There were a number of well reported instances of black American citizens being killed by the police in 2014. Not all of them were as well reported as the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson. According to Mapping Police Violence there were at least 1175 people killed by the police in 2014. 302 (25%) of them were black.
The National Police Violence Map is a mapped timeline of the 302 black men and women killed by the police in 2014. The map uses CartoDB's Torque library to animate through the year. You can click on any of the map markers to learn more about the individual killed and a brief description of the circumstances surrounding the death.

Home.Land.Security
say that there are many websites dedicated to mapping crime but not
many that are mapping where people feel vulnerable because of the police
themselves.

Home.Land.Security claim that many individuals "including people of
color, queer folks, and undocumented immigrants" see a police presence
as itself a threat. They have therefore determined to map police
shootings and targeted arrests for what they call "quality of life"
crimes in San Francisco.

The Home.Land.Security map allows users to view the locations of
'Officer Involved Shootings' and reported "Quality of Life Crimes". It
is also possible to load demographic data onto the map and to view San
Francisco neighborhood boundaries.

After the shooting of the unarmed 18-year-old Mike Brown in Ferguson by a
police officer a number of Ferguson citizens came together to form Hands Up United.

Hands Up United's goal in the short-term is to get justice for the
shooting of Mike Brown and, in the long-term, to help prevent future
incidents of police brutality. To help achieve this goal Hand Up United
has released an interactive map which anyone can use to post reports of
police brutality or police misuse of power.

This Google Map from the Cato Institute shows the location of botched SWAT and paramilitary police raids in the United States.

The
Cato Institute argue that "the Drug War (has) given rise to a dramatic
increase in the number of 'no-knock' or 'quick-knock' raids on suspected
drug offenders. Because these raids are often conducted based on tips
from notoriously unreliable confidential informants, police sometimes
conduct SWAT-style raids on the wrong home, or on the homes of
nonviolent, misdemeanor drug users."

The Botched Paramilitary Police Raids map uses colored map
markers to show raids that led to the death of innocent people, the
death of a non-violent offender, the death or injury of a police officer
etc. It is possible to refine the data on the map by state, year and by
outcome.